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William Lukens Shoemaker 



The Purple East 



The Purple East 



A Series of Sonnets on England's 
Desertion of Armenia 



BY 

WILLIAM WATSON 




CHICAGO : STONE & KIMBALL 
LONDON : JOHN LANE 



MDCCCXCVI 



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7%^(,«> 



COPYRIGHT, i8q6 
BV JOHN LANE 



Gift. 
■W". L- Shoemaker 

7 8 '06 



Contents 

PAGE 

THE TURK IN ARMENIA I5 

CRAVEN ENGLAND 1 7 

THE PRICE OF PRESTIGE Ig 

HOW LONG ? 21 

REPUDIATED RESPONSIBILITY 23 

ENGLAND TO AMERICA 2$ 

A BIRTHDAY 2/ 

THE TIRED LION 29 

THE BARD-IN-WAITING 3 1 

LEISURED JUSTICE 33 

THE PLAGUE OF APATHY 35 

THE KNELL OF CHIVALRY 37 

A TRIAL OF ORTHODOXY 39 

"IF" 41 

A HURRIED FUNERAL 43 

A WONDROUS LIKENESS 45 

STARVING ARMENIA 47 

LAST WORD 48 

5 



Preface 

A WORD as to the origin of these Son- 
nets may perhaps be expedient. The 
first of them, "The Turk in Armenia," was 
published as long ago as March 2, 1895, 
during the Premiership of Lord Rosebery; 
was subsequently included in the Author's 
latest volume of verse; and is here reprinted 
with some alteration. The occcasion of 
the one entitled "Repudiated Responsibil 
ity" was a recent public utterance of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer. This, and 
its companion pieces, with the exception of 
three, which now see the light for the first 
time, were contributed in rapid succes- 
sion to the Westminster Gazette, during 
December and January, 1895-6; several 
have since undergone considerable revi- 
sion. After the publication of the first 

7 



8 Preface 

seven there appeared a reply, from the 
pen of the present Poet Laureate, in 
the shape of three sonnets, entitled a "A 
Vindication of England," and addressed to 
''To the Author of 'The Purple East.'" 
Their substance may with perfect truth and 
fairness be recapitulated in a few words of 
prose. The Poet Laureate assured me — 
Firstly, that whosoever in any circumstances 
arraigns this country for anything that she 
may do or leave undone, thereby covers 
himself with shame; secondly, that although 
the continued torture, rape, and massacre of 
a Christian people under the eyes of a 
Christian continent may be a lamentable 
thing, it is best to be patient, seeing that 
the patience of God Himself can never be 
exhausted; and thirdly, that if I were but 
with him in his pretty country-house, were 
but comfortably seated "by the yule-log's 
blaze," and joining with him in seasonable 
conviviality, the enigmas of Providence and 
the whole mystery of things would presently 



Preface 9 

become transparent to me, and more es- 
pecially after " drinking to England," I 
should be enabled to understand that "she 
bides her hour behind the bastioned brine." 
To the Laureate's amiable effusion, with its 
conventional patriotism and its absolute 
penury of argument, pages 31-4 of this 
booklet are of the nature of a reply. 

Passing to less personal issues, I myself 
have but little hope that any mere written 
word can bear visible fruit, while the spiritual 
frost lies so hard upon the land as at this 
time. I am indeed loth to go so far as the 
great Painter who suffers my pen to be 
ennobled by temporary association with his 
pencil, and who has expressed to me his 
belief that ** nothing at this moment is possi- 
ble except a national mourning." With 
profound veneration for the genius that has 
so often transferred the poet's emotion and 
the mystic's vision in the splendours of 
colour and form, I must hope that herein at 
least he is wrong; that something besides 



lO 



Preface 



lamentation alone is even yet possible: 
though I, too, feel that without \\. — without 
penitent tears for our tragic errors as the 
first condition of effort — nothing that is 
worth the doing can be done. 

In the sphere of practical action, if, not- 
withstanding our paramount naval power, 
notwithstanding the moral support, and 
surely, in such a cause, and in eventual 
emergency, the material support of all the 
nobler elements of Anglo-Saxon civilisation 
throughout the world, the position of England 
relatively to the European imbroglio and to 
her own Egyptian, South African, and Ameri- 
can complications be really such as to render 
hopeless any Crusade of this Empire against 
that Vicegerency of Hell which is acquiesced 
in as the Ottoman Government, then let us 
do what many earnest-minded Englishmen, 
even among those who are no enthusiastic 
friends of Russia, are urging as the only 
possible solution of a problem that cries 
aloud, with the tongues of thrice a hundred 



Preface 1 1 

thousand martyrs, to be solved. If in very 
truth England herself cannot move — if she 
must perforce sit like the victim of the wand 
of Comus, her nerves 

" Chained up in alabaster, 
And she a statue, or as Daphne was, 
Root-bound, that fled Apollo " — 

then let her at least abandon her selfish 
obstruction of those who can move and who 
would. And if an appeal to the national 
conscience is vain, let us fall back for a 
moment upon lower ethical considerations, 
and ask ourselves whether in the end it will 
even advantage us to have postponed the 
rescue of a dying people to our own alleged 
interests in the maintenance of a diabolical 
tyranny. To have been the accessory to a 
tremendous crime, whether before or after 
the fact, whether by direct complicity or by 
the passive connivance of non-intervention 
where effective intervention was possible, 
will not permanently aid a nation, any more 
than it would aid an individual to go about 



1 2 Preface 

the business of life with that inmost self- 
approval which can afford to ignore the 
adverse judgments of the half-informed, and 
which is more potent than any plaudits to 
sustain and secretly inspire. Wanting that 
silent ratification, unfortified by that inward 
sanction, a nation must needs lose vigour 
and assurance. Her walk grows feverish, 
and her rejoicings troubled, for a shadowy 
accuser waylays her footsteps, and haunts 
the background of her feasts. 

William Watson. 



The Purple East 



The Turk in Armenia 

T T 7*HAT profits it, O England, to prevail 
^ ^ In camp and mart and council, 

and bestrew 
With argosies thy oceans, and renew 
With tribute levied on each golden gale 
Thy treasuries, if thou canst hear the wail 
Of women martyred by the turbaned crew 
Whose tenderest mercy was the sword 

that slew, 
And lift no hand to wield the purging 

flail? 

We deemed of old thou held'st a charge 
from Him 

Who watches girdled by His seraphim, 

15 



1 6 The Turk in Armenia 

To smite the wronger with thy destined 
rod. 

Wait'st thou His sign? Enough, the un- 
answered cry 

Of virgin souls for vengeance, and on 
high 

The gathering blackness of the frown of 
God! 



Craven England 17 



Craven England 

TV T EVER, O craven England, nevermore 
'*' ^ Prate thou of generous effort, right- 
eous aim ! 
Betrayer of a people, know thy shame 
Summer hath passed, and Autumn's thresh- 
ing floor 
Been winnowed ; Winter at Armenia's door 
Snarls like a wolf; and still the sword 

and flame 
Sleep not ; thou only sleepest ; and the same 
Cry unto heaven ascends as heretofore ; 
The guiltless perish, and no man regards; 
And sunk in ease, and lost to noble pride, 
Stirred by no clarion blowing loud and 
wide. 



1 8 Craven England 

Thy sons forgot what Truth and Honour 

meant, 
And, day by day, to sit among the shards 
Of broken faith are miserably content. 



The Price of Prestige 19 



The Price of Prestige 

"VT'OU in high places ; you that drive the 

-*- steeds 
Of empire ; you that say unto our hosts, 
"Go thither," and they go; and from our 

coasts 
Bid sail the squadrons, and they sail, their 

deeds 
Shaking the world : lo ! from a land that 

pleads 
For mercy where no mercy is, the ghosts 
Look in upon you faltering at your posts — 
Upbraid you parleying while a people bleeds 
To death. What stays the thunder in 

your hand ? 



20 The Price of Prestige 

A fear for England ? Can her pillared 

fame 
Only on faith forsworn securely stand, 
On faith forsworn that murders babes and 

men ? 
Are such the terms of Glory's tenure ? 

Then 
Fall her accursed greatness, in God's name ! 



How Long? 21 



How Long? 

T TEAPED in their ghastly graves they 

-*" -*- lie, the breeze 

Sickening o'er fields where others vainly 

wait 
For burial : and the butchers keep high 

state 
In silken palaces of perfumed ease. 
The panther of the desert, matched with 

these, 
Is pitiful ; beside their lust and hate. 
Fire and the plague-wind are compassionate, 
And soft the deadliest fangs of ravening 

seas. 
How long shall they be borne ? Is not 

the cup 



22 How Long? 

Of crime yet full ? Doth devildom still 
lack 

Some consummating crown, that we hold 
back 

The scourge, and in Christ's borders give 
them room ? 

How long shall they be borne, O Eng- 
land ? Up 

Tempest of God, and sweep them to their 
doom ! 



Repudiated Responsibility 23 



Repudiated Responsibility 

T HAD not thought to hear it voiced so 
-■- plain, 

Uttered so forthright, on their lips who steer 
This nation's course: I had not thought to 

hear 
That word re-echoed by an English thane, 
Guilt's maiden speech when first a man 

lay slain, 
"Am I my brother's keeper?" Yet full 

near 
It sounded, and the syllables rang clear 
As the immortal rhetoric of Cain. 
"Wherefore should we, sirs, more than 

they — or they — 
Unto these helpless reach a hand to save?" 



24 Repudiated Responsibility 

An English thane, in this our English air, 
Speaking for England ? Then indeed her 

day 
Slopes to its twilight, and for Honour there 
Is needed but a requiem, and a grave. 



England to America 25 



England to America 

O TOWERING Daughter, Titan of the 
West, 
Behind a thousand leagues of foam secure ; 
Thou toward whom our inmost heart is pure 
Of ill intent ; although thou threatenest 
With most unfilial hand thy mother's breast, 
Not for one breathing-space may Earth 

endure 
The thought of War's intolerable cure 
For such vague pains as vex to-day thy 

rest ! 
But if thou hast more strength than thou 

canst spend 
In tasks of Peace, and find'st her yoke 

too tame, 



26 England to America 

Help us to smite the cruel, to befriend 
The succourless, and put the false to shame. 
So shall the ages laud thee, and thy name 
Be lovely among nations to the end. 



A Birthday 27 



A Birthday 



IT is the birthday of the Prince of Peace : 
Full long ago He lay with steeds in 

stall, 
And universal Nature heard through all 
Her borders that the reign of Pan must 

cease. 
The fatness of the land, the earth's increase, 
Cumbers the board; the holly hangs in 

hall ; 
Somewhat of her abundance Wealth lets 

fall; 
It is the birthday of the Prince of Peace. 
The dead rot by the wayside; the unblest 
Who live, in caves and desert mountains 

lurk 



28 A Birthday 

Trembling, his foldless flock, shorn of their 

fleece. 
Women in travail, babes that suck the 

breast. 
Are spared not. Famine hurries to her 

work, 
It is the birthday of the Prince of Peace. 



The Tired Lion 29 



The Tired Lion 

OPEAK once again, with that great note 

*^ of thine, 

Hero withdrawn from Senates and their 

sound 
Unto thy home by Cambria's northern 

bound, 
Speak once again, and wake a world supine. 
Not always, not in all things, was it mine 
To follow where thou led'st : but who hath 

found 
Another man so shod with fire, so crowned 
With thunder, and so armed with wrath 

divine ? 
Lift up thy voice once more ! The nation's 

heart 



JO The Tired Lion 

Is cold as Anatolia's mountain snows. 
Oh, from these alien paths of base repose 
Call back thy England, ere thou too de- 
part — 
Ere, on some secret mission, thou too start 
With silent footsteps, whither no man 
knows. 



The Bard-in- Waiting 31 



The Bard-in-Waiting 

'T^REACHERY'S apologist, whose num- 
"*" bers rung 

But yesterday, remonstrant in my ear ; 
Thou to whom England seems a mistress 

dear, 
Insatiable of honey from thy tongue : 
Because I crouch not fawning slaves among, 
How is my service proved the less sincere ? 
Have not I also deemed her without peer ? 
Her beauty have not I too seen and sung ? 
But for the love I bore her lofty ways. 
What were to me her stumblings and her 

slips ? 
And lovely is she still, her maiden lips 



32 The Bard-in-Waiting 

Pressed to the lips whose foam around her 

plays ! 
But on her brow's benignant star whose rays 
Lit them that sat in darkness, lo ! the 

eclipse. 



Leisured Justice 33 



Leisured Justice 

"OHE bides her hour." And must I 

^^ then believe 
That when the day of peril is o'erpast, 
She who was great because so oft she cast 
All thought of peril to the waves that heave 
Against her feet, shall greatly undeceive 
Her purblind son who dreamed she shrank 

aghast 
From Duty's signal, and shall act at last, 
When there is naught remaining to re- 
trieve ? 
At last! when the last altar is defiled, 
And there are no more maidens to de- 
flower — 



34 Leisured Justice 

When the last mother folds with famished 

arms 
To her dead bosom her last butchered 

child- 
Then shall our England, throned beyond 

alarms, 
Rise in her might ! Till then, " she bides 

her hour." 



The Plague of Apathy 35 



The Plague of Apathy 

"TV TO tears are left; we have quickly 
•*- ^ spent that store ! 
Indifference like a dewless night hath come. 
From wintry sea to sea the land lies numb. 
With palsy of the spirit stricken sore, 
The land lies numb from iron shore to 

shore. 
The unconcerned, they flourish: loud are 

some. 
And without shame. The multitude stand 

dumb. 
The England that we vaunted is no more. 
Only the witling's sneer, the worldling's 

smile. 



j6 The Plague of Apathy 

The weakling's tremors, fail him not who 

fain 
Would rouse to noble deed. And all the 

while, 
A homeless people, in their mortal pain, 
Toward one far and famous ocean isle 
Stretch hands of prayer, and stretch those 

hands in vain. 



The Knell of Chivalry 37 



The Knell of Chivalry 

O VANISHED morn of crimson and of 
gold, 

youth and roselight and romance, wherein 

1 read of paynim and oj^aladin, 

And beauty snatched ff©m ogre's dun- 
geoned hold ! 

Ever the recreant would in dust be rolled, 

Ever the true knight in the joust would win. 

Ever the scaly shape of monstrous Sin 

At last lie vanquished, fold on writhing 
fold. 

Was it all false, that world of princely 
deeds, 

The splendid quest, the good fight ringing 
clear ? 



38 The Knell of Chivalry 

Yonder the Dragon ramps with fiery gorge, 
Yonder the victim faints and gasps and 

bleeds ; 
But in his merry England our St. George 
Sleeps a base sleep beside his idle spear. 



A Trial of Orthodoxy 39 



A Trial of Orthodoxy 






'T^HE clinging children at their mother's 
-*- knee 

Slain ; and the sire and kindred one by one 
Flayed or hewn piecemeal ; and things 

nameless done, 
Not to be told : while imperturbably 
The nations gaze, where Rhine unto the sea. 
Where Seine and Danube, Thames and 

and Tiber run, 
And where great armies glitter in the sun. 
And great kings rule, and man is boasted 

free ! 
What wonder if yon torn and naked throng 
Should doubt a Heaven that seems to wink 

and nod. 



40 A Trial of Orthodoxy 

And having moaned at noontide, *'Lord, 

how long?" 
Should cry, "Where hidest Thou?" at 

evenfall 
At midnight, " Is he deaf and blind, our 

God?" 
And ere day dawn, "Is He indeed, at all ?" 



"If" 



41 



a 



If" 



"yEA, if ye could not, though ye would, 
-*• lift hand — 
Ye halting leaders — to abridge Hell's reign, 
If, for some cause ye may not yet make 

plain. 
Yearning to strike, ye stood as one may 

stand 
Who in a nightmare sees a murder planned 
And hurrying to its issue, and though fain 
To stay the knife, and fearless, must remain 
Madly inert, held fast by ghostly band; — 
If such your plight, most hapless ye of 

of men ! 
But if ye could and would not, oh, what plea, 



42 " If" 

Think ye, shall stead you at your trial, when 
The thunder-cloud of witnesses shall loom. 
With ravished childhood on the seat of 

doom, 
At \he Assizes of Eternity ? 



A Hurried Funeral 43 



A Hurried Funeral 

A LITTLE deeper, sexton. You forget, 
She you would bury 'neath so thin 

a crust 
Of loam, was fiery-souled, and ev'n in dust 
She may lie restless, she may toss and fret, 
Nay, she might break a seal too lightly set, 
And vex, unmannerly, our ease ! She must 
Beneath no lack of English earth lie thrust. 
Would we unhaunted sleep! Nay, deeper 

vet. 
Quick, friend, the cortege comes. There — 

that will serve ; 
Deep enough now ; and thou'lt need all thy 

nerve, 



44 A Hurried Funeral 

If, in her coffin, at the last, amid 
The mourners in the customary suits, 
And to the scandal of these decent mutes, 
This corpse of England's Honour burst 
the lid! 



A Wondrous Likeness 45 



A Wondrous Likeness 

OTILL on Life's loom, the infernal warp 
^^ and weft 

Woven each hour ! Still, in august renown, 
A great realm watching, under God's great 

frown ! 
Ever the same ! The little children cleft 
In twain : the little tender maidens reft 
Of maidenhood ! And through a little town 
A stranger journeying, wrote this record 

down, 
"In all the place there was not one man 

left." 
O friend, the sudden lightning of whose pen 
Makes Horror's countenance visible afar, 



46 A Wondrous Likeness 

And Desolation's face familiar, 

I think this very England of my ken 

Is wondrous like that little town, where are 

In all the streets and houses no more men. 



Starving Armenia 47 



Starving Armenia 

Open your hearts, ye clothed from head 

to feet, 
Ye housed and whole who listen to the cry 
Of them that not yet slain and mangled lie, 
Only despoiled of all that made life sweet — 
Only left bare to snow and wind and sleet, 
And roofless to the inhospitable sky; 
Give them of your abundance, lest they die 
And famine make this mighty woe complete; 
And lest if truly, as your creed aver, 
A day of reckoning come, it be your lot 
To hear the voice of the uprisen dead: 
*'We were the naked whom ye covered not, 
The sick to whom ye did not minister. 
And the anhungered whom ye gave not 
bread." 



4^ Last Word 



Last Word 

\ ND save to mourn, is there nought left 
-^"^ to do, 

Nought ye can do, O sons of England ? 

Yes: 
Ye can arise, reclaim your manliness, 
And flee the things that are unmakfng you. 
Still in your midst there dwells a remnant, 

who 
Love not an unclean Art, a Stage no less 
Unclean, a gibing and reviling Press, 
A febrile Muse, and Fiction febrile too. 
And they it is would pluck you from this 

slime 
Whereof the rank miasma clouds your brain 



Last Word 49 

With sloth that slays and torpor that is 

crime 
Till ye can feel nought keenly, see nought 

plain. 
Hearken their call, and heed, while yet is 

time, 
Lest ye be lulled too deep to wake again. 



PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 

AND SONS COMPANY, AT THE 

LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 

MDCCCXCVI 



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